Latest Ebola Outbreak Linked To Chimpanzees

February 17, 1996|By New York Times News Service.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — At least 10 people who feasted on chimpanzee meat in a remote region of Gabon have died of the Ebola virus, according to World Health Organization experts who flew to Gabon this week to investigate the deaths.

The people who died in the latest outbreak of Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever dreaded for its virulence, took sick after a feast of chimpanzee meat on Jan. 26 in Mayibout, a village in northeastern Gabon, on the west coast of Central Africa.

International health experts said nine other villagers with the symptoms of the infection were placed in isolation at a hospital in Makokou, the provincial capital, about 90 miles from the village. According to radio reports monitored here, the authorities in Gabon sealed off the area where the outbreak occurred.

Last year, in neighboring Zaire, an outbreak of the virus in Kikwit killed at least 244 people. Most died in a span of two weeks as the virus, spread through blood and other body fluids, infected many of the doctors and patients of that city's central hospital.

Chimpanzee and other monkey meats are delicacies in many parts of Central Africa. Scientists have long suspected that monkeys are carriers of the Ebola virus, and are responsible for transmitting the infection to humans.